Your Source For Custom Farrowing and Nursery Floors
ADA Enterprises is a premier provider of flooring options to the animal industry, including swine specific operations. In this article we’ll highlight some of the reasons for this, upon the backdrop of helping you find the right solution for your custom flooring needs.
Oftentimes there are opportunities in the planning phases of a retrofit or expansion of a farrowing or nursery operation to save money and add excellent return on investment. This article will help you ask the right questions to maximize your potential for savings and ROI.
Questions that you’ll want to be asking when searching for nursery flooring for Swine
One of the best ways to ensure proper ordering and implementation of infrastructure for your swine operation is simply to understand what to ask. Of course, this is not to say you aren’t already an expert at what you do, rather, it is to showcase the collective experience of a team of people that do this type of work day in and day out.
Our representatives can help you understand the industry through their understanding of hundreds of successful meat operations and many years of experience. Here are some types of questions you should consider that may help you to leverage our expertise and resources.
How many Farrowing crates do you have in a row?
Do you have existing infrastructure in place (e.g. flooring supports)?
Do you need a self supporting flooring solution?
Can you benefit from a modular custom solution?
Do you need warming solutions because of the climate?
Are you currently seeing injuries to hooves and legs of nursery and farrowed animals?
You may also consider making a short list of concerns you have with your existing solution, or important variables that you want to incorporate in future builds.
How to improve the buying experience when you are considering new flooring or retrofit flooring for a nursery or farrowing operation
Of course we’ll do our best to support you in the purchase process. We’d love for you to consider our products to meet real world needs in your operation.
When in the planning phases of a retrofit or new build, you can make up a lot of ground by establishing your list of needs, or at least a set of problems you want to avoid. Knowing the direction you want to move in can help cut time and inefficiency from the process. Streamlining your build can have vast positive implications for your operation.
Another helpful suggestion is to be willing to listen and learn. We know how good you are at your business. We work with some of the smartest companies and individuals in the industry.
Ask questions, see if our answers align with your general direction. If they do, ask further questions to solidify a plan moving forward. If our answers don’t align with your thoughts on the matter, ask why.
We don’t have all the answers for every organization, but you may be able to find new innovations, interesting ways of using products or ideological frameworks, and more efficient ways of driving your business.
Oftentimes, our clients come up with solutions simply by thinking through their own processes. Some even move forward with different solutions than we provide. We think an important takeaway is to remain willing to understand different approaches and the power of collective experience in growing your business. Your success is our success.
Why a consultative approach makes sense when buying swine operation flooring
We try to sell through a process of listening and providing feedback, instead of just pushing our product to operators. Understanding your needs helps us to make improvements in many areas of our business, while providing insights that may improve engineering, implementation and other aspects.
We want to facilitate an approach to building a nursery or farrowing operation, and ultimately your full operation, that seeks to find harmony between efficiency, value, and real-world day-to-day needs.
Some points about the farrowing and nursery flooring from ADA Enterprises
Regarding the above questions we touched on earlier – how can ADA Enterprises help you succeed in your swine operation?
How many Farrowing crates do you have in a row?
This is a specific question that also addresses a larger concept. It’s why we build modular and custom solutions for nursery and farrowing flooring. What is your setup? How much room do you need between flooring runs? What needs to be incorporated into the design of your flooring?
Even knowing what your square footage of flooring needed is a valuable insight – measuring total potential square footage ahead of time is necessary in obtaining a proper quote. Knowing what you plan to use from a square footage perspective is essential, even if you plan for some growth moving forward.
Remember, our modular solutions can make subsequent builds easier, but it’s important to share potential future desires when talking with one of our representatives – there may be some ways to save money, or some interesting design changes that can improve efficiency..
Knowing whether you need to accommodate open space or need railing, or if you are going wall to wall, or whether you need to add accessory options like under floor access in specific areas is important.
Do you have existing infrastructure in place (e.g. flooring supports)?
Are you building out more on an existing physical framework? If you have flooring supports we can accommodate them. But it helps if you know what direction you want to move in regarding the existing infrastructure, vs. what is possible. We can provide things like self supporting flooring to cohabitate with existing supports. We can also build-to-suit, for existing supports.
Do you need a self supporting flooring solution?
Self supporting solutions can work in a variety of locations, and are particularly good for operations where you need to be a bit more flexible on space and movement of animals over the longer term. While our products are famous for their solid, heavy duty construction, having self supporting options may also provide you a bit more flexibility if you may occasionally need to redesign a floor plan slightly or space workflow.
When building with a custom but modular system, some of the pieces will utilize a standardized sizing, and allow for some flexibility.
Can you benefit from a modular custom solution?
We build custom solutions. Every flooring implementation we sell is at least partially custom. Our flooring products are also modular by nature. We build pieces that can be replaced, serviced and put into use in a simple way. We customize the surrounding pieces to ensure that we can fit your specific areas. A modular system allows flexibility, especially in long-term ownership – a trademark concept for our products. A custom solution allows for growth and efficiency improvements using existing and future designs.
Any operation should be able to benefit from past best practices, and future innovations simultaneously. Using a custom and a modular approach frees you up to do just that, while getting your daily needs met now.
Do you need warming solutions because of the climate?
Warming solutions can improve animal health, overall comfort for animals and improve yields. Buying high quality warming solutions if you operate in an environment that may be able to benefit from them, can be an important and an infrequent investment. Knowing how to build around, and incorporate warming solutions efficiently is important if you have cold winters.
Some industry standard warming solutions need to be built around. Knowing how to incorporate the designs up front in the planning process is important.
Other warming solutions, like some of those that we recommend, can be utilized for a vast majority of swine operations without significant restructuring. Knowing available solutions, or allowing yourself flexibility with custom designed architectures can be a benefit to your bottom line.
Are you currently seeing injuries to hooves and legs of nursery and farrowed animals?
From an animal perspective, we all want to see the best conditions for animals throughout the lifecycle. But, part of the reality of the industry is that what’s best for the animal is usually best for the business, anyway. If you can improve the health of animals, it means bigger, better yields. Minimizing leg and foot injuries means better throughput and less antibiotics and hiccups in your “to market” operations.
ADA Enterprises products allow for cleaner animal experiences. Fecal matter and wet ground stays off the animals leading to improved health. Open build styles means you get cleaner and easier to maintain spaces. But the design also prioritizes smaller openings to ensure significantly fewer foot and leg injuries in the nursery and farrowing stages – this means you can get the best of both worlds.
How you can take advantage of our experience and find the right product
Here are a few points about ADA Enterprises flooring solutions:
- We build modular and custom solutions
- Our open design allows for easy maintenance and cleaner animals while still protecting small hooves and fragile legs
- We can provide self supported flooring, or fit to existing rails and footings
- Our durability is world class thanks to solid steel designs with plastisol coatings
- Long-term return on investment is high for our products
- We have a team of highly experienced representatives than can help you optimize your operation by helping you maximize on our flooring products to improve health, safety and efficiency in your pig operation
Building upon these already incorporated best practices, you can also leverage our insights, our experience and our consultative approach by reaching out to us to help brainstorm a strong plan for your expansion, new operation or retrofit for your swine specific business.
We look forward to working with you to provide the best experience for your animals, the best investment return for your money, and the best day-to-day routine for your staff.